Regular readers of this blog will already know the story about my crippling speculoos addiction, how I was unable to control myself and the long, difficult struggle I went through to become a normal and productive member of society once again. I have been clean for several months now and no longer find myself under the control of its delicious goodness. My life is back to normal.

Or at least I thought it was until I recently discovered this in our kitchen:

Ok. I know I ‘maybe’ sometimes over exaggerate the whole speculoos addiction thing in the name of comedy (the stuff is just so damn amazing) but I honestly have no idea how this happened. I’m not intentionally hording the stuff.

I am serious. I didn’t even know that they were there. It was only while rummaging through one of the kitchen cupboards recently that I discovered this stock pile scattered amongst the other breakfast goods, hidden behind the tea bags, cereal and hagelslag.

They are not half empty either. They’re all full. This is the kind of obsessive compulsive addiction hording behaviour that would put a crack addict to shame. How many more jars might I have hidden around the house without even realizing? Did I hijack a delivery truck while in some kind of speculoos induced haze?

This isn’t everything either. There is even speculoos ice cream in the freezer and biscuits in the biscuit tin. This is not a joke any more. I really do need help.

It is a widely excepted fact that tourists are strange. It is also a widely accepted fact that they do strange things.

At the start of spring confused looking tourists clutching maps suddenly appear on every street corner of Amsterdam like members of a badly organised invasion. If they are not busy interrogating the locals for hotel directions tourists keep themselves occupied by trying to put money through the card slot of the ticket machines at central station or by asking several times if a tram is going to the destination which is clearly written upon it in very large letters. They also get confused trying to work out if the Dutch euro is the same as the euro back home if they come from Europe and use the phrase ‘monopoly money’ a lot during their visit if they don’t.

When communicating with locals most tourists (especially the English) try to smash through the language barrier with the brute force of talking louder. When this fails (and when said local has been appropriately deafened) tourists will then attempt the opposite and employ a strange kind of sign language that involves a lot of pointing at maps.

People start doing strange things to try and please these visitors. The appearance of tourists suddenly makes it acceptable to stand in a public place and enthusiastically rant about nearby buildings. Such behaviour that would normally have locals crossing the street in avoidance will instead attract crowds of devoted listeners who want to hear about the time the architect visited Greece and got his foot stuck in a bucket.

Tourists also do things that they normally would never do in their own country. For example; entire families of tourists will happily take a stroll around the red light district because it is ‘famous’ and ‘has to be seen’ but they would never dream of taking the children for a day trip around the porn section of their local video store (and to suggest such things is apparently considered ‘crazy talk’. It’s just double standards if you ask me).

Tourists are strange… And that’s not even including the ones who only come for the red light district and coffee shops.

It was the kind of question I had gotten used to being asked in Amsterdam a lot. Usually it was asked by tourists with a look of cheeky excitement in their eyes who didn’t care if people will judge them. However, it had taken this gentlemen five minutes of silently standing at the same tram stop and several glances in my direction before he had cautiously made one last final check that the coast was clear, shuffled over the few steps towards me and quietly asked his question. It was as if he was worried that the police or his mother might be listening in.

We were quite far from the red light district, almost on the other side of town to be exact (Leidseplein). For a moment I wondered if he had been walking around Amsterdam for several hours, trying to build up the confidence to ask someone for directions. I informed him of the best way to get to the red light district and he thanked me. Our brief conversation had seemed to reach it’s natural conclusion so I continued to wait for my tram.

There was a short pause. “Do you know how much it costs?”

This was a new one. No one had ever asked me for a price comparison before. I don’t know why I let myself be dawn in to the conversation but rather than simply saying ‘no’ I started to make guesses and hypothesise that it probably varied depending on what services were being requested and how much the girl looked like Scarlett Johansson.

He nodded as if he was about to start taking notes. There was another short pause as he looked from side to side again. Then he asked a question I was really not expecting. “Do you know how it all works?”

Did I know how it all worked? I thought the question about the price had been strange but this was a whole new level. I didn’t know how to respond at first. Either this fellow thought I seemed like the kind of chap who paid regular visits to the red light district and was deeply familiar with the correct etiquette and protocol of such matters. Or he thought I was a pimp. It was probably my own fault for trying to guess prices and making myself seem like an expert in his eyes.

I also wondered just how much detail he wanted this information in. Was he simply asking about how the business transaction and exchanging of money worked or was he actually asking how ‘it’ worked? Did I have to explain about the birds and the bees? The physical mechanics? The ins and outs (as it were)? This was suddenly turning into the kind of conversation I was not expecting to have until I had children of my own. Should I try to explain to this gentlemen that sometimes when a man and woman exchange a lot of money they have a special kind of hug?

I decided that the best course of action was to not make any more guesses and told him that I had never been to the red light district myself. This had the effect of making it sound like we were discussing summer vacation destinations.

He seemed very disappointed by this, looked at his feet and then suddenly seemed to realize just how strange the conversation had been. He looked at me again and nervously shuffled away as if he was afraid that I would re-tell the conversation to his mother. I wonder if he ever found the red light district.